


Frozen Solitude

by softmoonlight



Series: Whumptober 2020 [11]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: Rebels, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: CT-6116 | Kix Needs A Hug, CT-6116 | Kix-centric, Canonical Character Death, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Non-Linear Narrative, Post Episode: s07e12 Victory and Death, Post-Star Wars: Rebels, Whumptober, Whumptober 2020, only a bit though, to a degree
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 04:54:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27138290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/softmoonlight/pseuds/softmoonlight
Summary: Kix has to see for himself.
Relationships: CT-5597 | Jesse & CT-6116 | Kix, CT-6116 | Kix & Ahsoka Tano, CT-6116 | Kix & CT-7567 | Rex, CT-6116 | Kix & Sabine Wren
Series: Whumptober 2020 [11]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1952500
Comments: 5
Kudos: 81
Collections: Whumptober, Whumptober 2020





	Frozen Solitude

**Author's Note:**

> Day 19 prompts: **grief | mourning loved ones | survivor's guilt**
> 
> ...please forgive the awful title okay

It’s cold.

It’s _so_ cold, freezing down to the bone even in his full armor, biting at the skin of his exposed face.

Suddenly, Kix can’t move. He stares across the chasm of white nothing that separates him from what he knows is his brothers’ final resting place, and he swallows. Although probably less than a klick away, the distance feels insurmountable.

“It’s a pretty big ship. Are you sure about this?” Sabine asks behind him, nervous. She probably regrets humoring him instead of telling the others.

Kix nods. Doesn’t turn around, though. If he turns around, he won’t be able to go through with it. “I have to do this. They’ll understand.”

He hopes they will, anyway. There’s no nice way to say “I need to go by myself to find the graves you dug” to someone. No nice way to say, “I’m not sure I could handle you watching me while I did.”

That’s why he asked Sabine to bring him here. He can still barely comprehend it, but she was a mere baby when it all happened. She’ll pity him, yes, but there won’t be any _expectations_ about his reaction.

“Okay. Just hit the comm when you’re done.” The _Phantom’s_ door hisses shut behind him, muffling the last bit of warmth.

He’s alone and stock-still and cold in a way that is _far_ too familiar, and he needs to move.

Kix inhales deeply, steeling himself, and puts his bucket on before he starts out. One foot in front of the other, one step at a time, one piece of a journey to a horrible destination that it’s his duty to reach. He’s on Umbara again, walking towards his own death, only for it to mean all his brothers’.

The buried ship is shapeless, undefined, forbidding. It dwarfs him, the top grey metal of the engines just barely poking out of the snow, so far above him that at first, he almost thinks it’s one of the clouds.

He doesn’t know where to begin, but then, that’s nothing new. He’s used to getting entire armies through as best he can with a wealth of injuries, no supplies, and no backup either. All that’s gone now, but he knows that just…starting is better than standing there and getting nothing done at all.

So he does.

He digs.

He digs into the snow, endlessly deep and most packed ice solid. He digs until he can’t feel anything anymore, until his fingers are frozen through under the plastoid, until he can’t see right, until his breath runs ragged with exertion, until the only thought in his mind frantic need to _find him._

Jesse. His closest brother and last remaining batchmate.

Fives was right, and Kix found out, and he was on his way to tell Jesse, to plan against impossible odds, because if he trusted anyone to help him do that, he’d trust Jesse, when—

Waking up suddenly, freezing inside, but burning up on the outside, like his skin itself is on fire, flailing around and _can’t see can’t see can’t see_ , voices saying something, but he can’t understand, can’t speak either, can’t yell for help and can’t shout about the chips, oh kriff what happened with the chips, he’s too late, they got him—

Waking up again, this time blinking groggily over several minutes at the ceiling of what must be some ship. An old man with a scruffy beard dozes in a chair at his bedside, snoring softly.

As if sensing Kix awake and watching him, he jolts to consciousness in a mere second, hand flying to his blaster holster and scanning the room for threats before landing on Kix. His gaze softens, and he looks relieved.

“Glad to see you’re feeling a little better.”

He looks vaguely familiar, from the face to the armor, but Kix can’t place him.

“Who are you? Where am I?”

The old man’s face falls, and he hangs his head for an impossibly long moment.

“It’s me, _vod_ ,” he says gently, once he’s gathered himself enough to meet Kix’s gaze again. “It’s Rex.”

Once again, everything Kix thought he knew about the universe falls apart.

He meets Ahsoka Tano a few minutes after Rex. It’s easier to call her by her name than it is to call his _ori’vod_ by his, because _Commander Tano_ is a sixteen-year-old baby-faced girl with tiny montrals, while _Ahsoka_ is a coolly collected, dryly witty operative just over forty. Rex, he can’t think about too much. Rex is the same, but he doesn’t _look_ the same, and Kix has no new name to call him.

They tell him that Jesse is dead, the Republic fell for over twenty years but is back again, the Jedi Order was wiped out, and that he, Rex, and Wolffe are the last living clone troopers in existence. They tell him about Order 66 and burying the bodies of the newly-made 332nd, marking their graves with the helmets they could find as a storm closed in, not far from here on some lifeless tundra moon. They tell him they found him while searching the galaxy for a missing Jedi Padawan, Ezra Bridger, a boy who was born the day the rest of them died. They tell him everyone thought him KIA, except Jesse, who’d insisted something bad must have happened to him and was downright angry the last few days.

He doesn’t speak much at all after that.

Now, he knows Jesse’s body lies somewhere beneath his fingertips and he _needs_ to find him. His bucket. He believes Ahsoka and Rex, but some part of him wants to prove them wrong. Jesse can’t really be here. Kix can’t have failed him that much. Kix can’t have left him alone while everything fell apart.

He will find him, or he’ll die here. It’s what he deserves, anyway, after having the information that could’ve stopped everything and not managing to do it.

Another armored hand settles warm and steady on his shoulder. Kix flinches away instinctively, but their grip holds him tight.

“It’s not your fault,” Rex says, and somehow, Kix can hear him over the roaring winds despite him not raising his voice at all. 

He’s been here a while then. Rex wasn’t on the _Phantom,_ and he’s obviously down here now because Sabine got worried. Kix didn’t even process how much time passed.

Kix shuts his eyes and shakes his head. “I _knew_.”

“So did I, in a way,” Rex counters. “You remember I told you I put in a request about Fives but didn’t do anything more. I spent a long time blaming myself, Kix, and I don’t want you to do the same. It’s not your fault Dooku got to you.”

“But…” he stares down at the mess he’s made—or the lack of it, really, since snow has started falling in earnest to cover what little progress he managed. “Jesse’s _there_.”

“I know.” Rex squeezes his once, reassuring, right in the space between the shoulder pads of his armor.

“I can’t— _leave_ him here,” he pleads, and he hates how his voice breaks.

Rex stares down at his feet, undoubtedly thinking of what lies below as well. It’s a long time before he says, barely more than a whisper, “You can’t stay forever, either. He wouldn’t...want that.”

 _I would know_ goes unsaid, but Kix hears it in his voice anyway.

“Just a little while longer.” He has to pay his respects before he can ever think about truly living again.

Rex relents with a single understanding nod, shifts a little to stand behind Kix, shielding him from the worst of the weather. He understands immediately that his brother’s taking some of the pain of standing out here onto himself to give Kix more time.

He wants to tell him to stop, but he can’t.

Instead, Kix wraps his arms around his knees like a small child he once was, only a few years and yet over a quarter century ago. He watches the ground unblinking and wishes he could feel the warmth of Jesse’s hand around his.

 _I’m so sorry,_ he tells him, over and over.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm highkey resentful of the sequel era for a lot of things that I make no secret about, but doing this to Kix (and whitewashing the hell out of him???) is one of the most unforgivable things. So I made it so that he can at least have Rex, Ahsoka, and also Wolffe even though we don't know whether he survives to 4/5 ABY yet.


End file.
